I can give you an exact date: 16 October 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia

This article (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/02/why-ame...) is basically canonical for things wrong with the media and it was written in 96.

More like died around 1920, if it was ever alive.

The big difference between the past and now is that today a journalist can presumably get at the "alternative facts" if they try because the internet makes secrecy much leakier much faster and makes circumstantial details more accessible. Contrast with 50yr ago Walter Kronkite had no idea how sketchy the whole Gulf of Tonkin stuff was and even if he did it's not like his employer had people doing OSint to verify things so all he could do was recite is like truth and off to war we went.

I deeply hate Noam Chomsky for his hypocrisy, but his 80's analysis that the press as a business can't do its job is profoundly right. It got much worse since then.